Policing and Crime Reduction PDF

Policing and Crime Reduction
The evidence and its implications for practice
Police Effectiveness in a Changing World Project

Dr Jacqui Karn

The evidence and its implications for practice
Dr Jacqui Karn, Senior Research and Development Officer,
The Police Foundation
June 2013
Acknowledgements
The Police Foundation is very grateful to the Dawes Trust for funding this report as part of the Police
Effectiveness in a Changing World project.
The Foundation would also like to thank Jesse Donaldson and Jenny Holland for their assistance with the
literature search and review and John Graham and Jon Collins for undertaking a final edit of the report. It would
also like to extend its gratitude to Professor Ian Loader, Professor Martin Innes, Andy Feist, Stephen Roe,
Rachel Tuffin, Dr Paul Quinton and Dr Amie Brown for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
About the Police Foundation

The Police Foundation is an independent think tank focused on developing knowledge and understanding of
policing and challenging the police service and the government to improve policing for the benefit of the public.
The Police Foundation acts as a bridge between the public, the police and the government, while being owned
by none of them.
Layout / Design by TAW Design and Print tawdesignandprint@btinternet.com 01271 314996.
Contents
Executive summary ...................................................................................... 3
Introduction .................................................................................................. 7
1. The role of the police in reducing crime ................................................ 9

Introduction ...................................................................................................... 9
What the police do .......................................................................................... 9
Does more police mean less crime? .............................................................. 10
What works in policing to reduce crime? ........................................................ 10
Traditional approaches to policing ................................................ 11
Targeted policing .......................................................................... 14
Maximising effective resource allocation ...................................... 18
Building relationships with the community .................................... 21
Summary and implications for the project ...................................................... 25
2. The challenges for local policing in a changing world ........................ 27
3. Meeting the challenges .......................................................................... 31

Neighbourhood policing: adapting to the changing world .............................. 31
Analysis and intelligence ................................................................................ 34
Conclusion .................................................................................................. 36
References .................................................................................................. 37
Executive summary
Introduction
The Police Effectiveness in a Changing World
project was initiated at a time of rapid,
fundamental changes both within the police
service and beyond. New forms of police
accountability, a renewed emphasis on fighting
crime alongside substantial cuts in budgets
present considerable challenges at a time when
globalisation, rapid developments in technology
and major changes in the way individuals, families
and communities live their lives are substantially
changing patterns of crime and victimisation.
The role and function of the police is changing
accordingly. The police mission has become
broader and more complex, embracing functions
more commonly associated with other agencies.
Yet politicians and the public still expect and
demand a police service that focuses on fighting
crime. The Police Effectiveness in a Changing
World project addresses these different
challenges by identifying and delivering better
police-led approaches to reducing crime. This
paper provides the evidence base on which the
project will draw.
Policing and crime reduction

Much police work is reactive and incident-focused
rather than proactive and strategic. Efforts to shift
policing towards a more effective and sustainable
approach to crime reduction have been few and
far between. Although the police do much more
than fight crime responding to civil emergencies,
maintaining order and even undertaking social
work they still constitute the front line in tackling
crime. And there is now a considerable body of
evidence on how effective they are at doing so,
which this paper summarises.
Traditionally, the police have favoured a law

enforcement approach to crime control based on
the theory of deterrence. This is largely manifested
through random patrols, emergency response,
stop and search, investigation and detection and
intensive enforcement, all of which still dominate
contemporary policing activity. Evidence from
research, however, suggests these strategies are
relatively ineffectual in reducing crime and
detecting offenders. Increasingly however, police
forces are moving towards identifying and
managing risk, which shifts resource allocation
towards specific individuals (prolific offenders and
repeat victims) and places (high crime areas) rather
than relying on arrest, conviction and punishment.
The targeting of resources on the most risky
people and places is characterised by
approaches to policing that identify hotspots of
criminal activity, vulnerable individuals at risk of
being repeatedly victimised and serious and
prolific offenders. Where resources are more
concentrated in these ways, crime is more likely
to be reduced. However simply concentrating
patrols in crime hotspots, for example, is
insufficient. It is important to adopt the right
tactics. Combining sensitive law enforcement with
situational and social measures, efforts to prevent
repeat victimisation and the active involvement of
the community helps to increase effectiveness.
Intelligence-led policing and problem-oriented
policing are two of the most developed
approaches to maximising the effective allocation
of police resources to reduce crime. The former
constitutes the basis of the National Intelligence
Model, which has been adopted by all police
forces in England and Wales. Based on strategic
assessments of targets and problems, it aims to
develop solutions to crime beyond recourse to the

criminal justice system. Intelligence-led policing
has not however been evaluated in terms of its
impact on crime.
Not dissimilar to intelligence-led policing,
problem-oriented policing emerged in response to
criticisms of traditional approaches to reducing
crime and approaches which simply focus
enforcement resources on hotspots. It aims to
reduce crime proactively and sustainably by
focusing on the most important problems
identified by local communities, using careful
analysis to define problems and inform
multi-agency solutions. There is strong evidence
that problem-oriented policing reduces crime, but
it is difficult to implement successfully.
The notion that communities have an important
part to play in crime reduction initiatives is
embedded in what is commonly referred to as
community (or neighbourhood) policing. Although
not as distinctively defined as intelligence-led or
problem-oriented policing, it has been widely
embraced both in North America and the UK.
Community policing helps to reassure the public
and increase their confidence in the police, but
the evidence that it delivers sustained reductions
in crime is equivocal.
Effective community engagement seems to be
central to any locally-based approach to reducing
crime. It ensures the right problems are
addressed and that the police and their partner
agencies are held to account for their actions.
There are fewer calls to the police when local
communities feel safer and have trust and
confidence in the police, and effective
engagement may even help to reduce crime. In
practice, however, community engagement too
often fails to embrace all sections of a local

community and/or take its views seriously.
The legitimacy of the police is important in
determining whether people are willing to
co-operate with the police (reporting incidents,
providing intelligence, acting as witnesses) and
comply with the law. By being fair, respectful and
just, the police are more likely to secure that
legitimacy and be more effective in reducing crime.
Meeting the demands of a more globalised,
culturally diverse and technologically connected
society with fewer resources represents a
significant challenge. Reliance on enforcing the
law to deter offenders and protect local
communities is limited in its capacity to respond
to these challenges and to prevent and reduce
crime. The evidence summarised here suggests
that these limited resources should instead:
Be targeted on high crime micro-locations

where the risks of potential harm are greatest.
Focus on connected problems rather than on

individual incidents and involve local
communities in identifying and prioritising
them and harnessing their own resources to
address them.
Be used to effectively engage with the local

community and harness the resources of
other agencies to deliver an integrated
approach to reducing crime.
Be aware of the central importance of

securing police legitimacy in delivering a new
and more effective approach.
Challenges for local policing

in a changing world
Notwithstanding the internal reforms and budget
cuts affecting the police service, there are major
socio-economic, demographic and technological

changes affecting contemporary patterns of crime
which demand new responses. The globalisation
of goods and services, the rapid spread of new
forms of communication, the increase in personal
mobility and migration, growing income inequality
and the fragmentation of families and
communities have created new threats and risks
and new criminal opportunities. It no longer
makes sense to tackle crime without
acknowledging the extent to which it crosses
local, regional and national boundaries.
These changes present considerable challenges
for the police, such as:
Working effectively across local, regional and

national borders.
Staying ahead of increasingly fluid criminal

networks.
Responding to new kinds of offences and

new ways of committing them.
Engaging with increasingly transient and

diverse communities and with citizens
connected more through social media than
through the places where they live.
Meeting increasing public expectations for

security and the demand for a visible
presence at a time when resources are
declining.
Faced with these and other challenges and asked

to do more with less, the risk is that the service
will retreat to familiar ground: reactive,
response-oriented policing, with resources being
deployed to respond to immediate demands
rather than more strategic, long term demands.
Community engagement, neighbourhood policing,
partnership working and problem-solving may all
be at risk as other agencies withdraw towards

their core activities.
Targeting resources to deliver the most impact is
now more important than ever. In the new 21st
century world of policing, the role of robust
evidence of effectiveness will become increasingly
important at a time when it may become
increasingly difficult to generate. The introduction
of Police and Crime Commissioners will have
important implications for resource allocation in a
new commissioning environment that embraces a
wider range of providers.
Meeting the challenges

The police service faces a period of profound
change. Neighbourhood policing, particularly in
transient, culturally diverse communities, will need
to develop new approaches to community
engagement and build collective efficacy around
shared norms and values. Public expectations of
what the police can and cannot deliver will need
to be carefully managed. And better sources of
community intelligence on, for example, new
types of criminal activity, hidden crime and
inter-connected offences that cross borders will
need to be fostered.
Many of these changes will need a different style
of policing, one which fosters the trust and
confidence of local communities and meets their
concerns and expectations. It will require a step
change in information management, with more
effective methods for gathering, sharing and
analysing intelligence to better inform tasking and
strategic decision-making. Developing these skills
will be crucial to effective problem-solving in highly
diverse and mobile communities such as Luton
and Slough.
Transforming information into intelligence to

provide a detailed, accurate picture of the
changing world and how the police should
respond to it will be key to improving the
effectiveness of policing in reducing crime. In
addition to the sheer volume of information, there
are real issues concerning data quality and how it
is used to inform tasking. The focus of crime
analysis needs to shift from tracking the
movements of known offenders to identifying
persistent problems and anticipating (rather than
reacting to) incidents or events. Crime analysts
need more sophisticated skills, better training and
more resources if they are to achieve the status
and influence the new world of policing urgently
requires.
Introduction
The Police Foundation is currently undertaking a
four-year independently funded project entitled
Police Effectiveness in a Changing World. The
project is based in Luton and Slough, two
average-sized, ethnically diverse towns without
especially high rates of crime or deprivation overall
but with pockets of deprivation and high
population turnover. It is being delivered at a time
of considerable policy and organisational change
for the police service. In addition to the reduction
in the central government grant to the police
service by 20 per cent over four years, the
coalition government has introduced wide-ranging
reforms to police accountability, in particular the
introduction of elected Police and Crime
Commissioners (PCCs), and re-emphasised the
police role as being first and foremost to fight
crime. This stands in contrast to the previous
government, with its broader focus on community
safety and, in its later years, the measurement of
police effectiveness in terms of public confidence.
The introduction of PCCs may, at least in some
force areas, serve to reinforce this shift, as do
police forces own targets, which continue to
prioritise the reduction of crime.
At the same time, wider contextual changes
globalisation of markets for goods and services,
the rapid expansion of information technology and
social media, the growth of personal mobility and
migration, the fragmentation of families and
communities and the ever-widening gap between
the rich and the poor are changing patterns of
crime. New threats create new forms of harm,
particularly for the most vulnerable groups:
children, new migrants, the elderly and the poor.
Identity theft, people trafficking, investment
scams, internet fraud and other emerging crimes
pose new challenges for the police, who must
also now work across local, regional and national

boundaries to keep abreast of increasingly fluid
criminal networks and their changing modus
operandi. Meanwhile, personal relationships
constructed primarily in neighbourhoods
composed of people sharing the same ethnic,
social and economic circumstances are becoming
increasingly rare.
The role of the police

In the UK, preventing and detecting crime and
preserving the public peace have been the central
mandate of the public police since its inception. In
practice, the police spend a large proportion of
their time performing other roles responding to
emergencies, protecting vulnerable people,
preventing terrorism and are often called upon
to deal with situations characterised as
something-that-ought-not-to-be-happening-andabout-which-someone-had-better-do-somethingnow! (Bittner, 1974). As graphically illustrated by
the 24 hour twitter experiment conducted by
Greater Manchester Police in 2010, the Police
Service are very much the agency of first resort,
with more than a third of all the incidents they
respond to on a daily basis being social work
rather than crime-related.
Ronnie Flanagans Review of Policing (2008)
suggested that over the last decade or so, this
public demand has resulted in the police service
mission becoming both broader and more
complex, requiring a response to issues that
might otherwise be addressed by other agencies.
This has also been accompanied by an
unprecedented increase in police powers and
resources. Yet the image of the police service as
largely engaged in crime control continues to
shape public and policy expectations of police
work 1 as well as rank and file understandings of

their role (Reiner, 2010). So despite this wider
mandate and an expansion in its mission, the
police service has been judged over the past 30
years or so primarily on the basis of its
effectiveness in tackling crime and continues to
be so. The Police Effectiveness in a Changing
World project continues this trend by focusing
primarily on police effectiveness in reducing crime,
which is the projects main aim.
The purpose of this report

This report provides some background to the
project by summarising the evidence base on
policing and crime reduction. It summarises the
key lessons from research on which the project will
draw in developing locally-tailored approaches to
improving police effectiveness and reducing crime,
addressing some of the organisational and
operational challenges arising out of the changing
socio-economic context in which the police
service 2 currently operates. It does not explore the
approach to practice development that will be
used during the project itself, but rather highlights
the way in which existing knowledge about current
challenges and effective practice might shape and
inform the project.
The report is divided into three sections. The first
section reviews the research literature on the role
of the police in reducing crime, drawing out some
of the key lessons. The second focuses on the
challenges facing the police service in a changing
world, while the third section focuses on the
implications of the conclusions from the first two
sections for the Police Effectiveness in a Changing
World project.
See, for example, the Home Secretarys speech to the National Policing
Conference 29 June 2010 when she stated: I couldnt be any clearer about
your mission ... it is to cut crime. No more. No less..
The project is primarily concerned with the role of the public police service in
reducing crime, not policing more broadly.
1. The role of the police in reducing crime

Introduction
Following a brief description of what is known
about what the police do and the extent to which
their activity is (or is not) based on robust
evidence, this section summarises the large body
of research on the effectiveness of policing in
reducing crime. Most of this evidence-base comes
from the US, but some also comes from the UK.
The review focuses primarily on those aspects of
policing commonly associated with uniform rather
than plain-clothes or civilian officers street patrol,
crime prevention and routine detection rather than
less visible forms of policing such as covert
surveillance and forensics. It relies primarily but not
exclusively on the findings of systematic reviews
rather than individual studies. The main aim is to
distil from this review the key lessons for the Police
Effectiveness in a Changing World project.
There are a number of ways in which the
presentation of this complex and considerable
body of work could be organised. There is no
right way of doing this, particularly given the
degree to which specific models and approaches
to policing are defined differently by different
scholars and sometimes overlap. The approach
adopted here organises the evidence primarily in
terms of how different approaches utilise and
allocate resources and, where possible, attempts
to differentiate strategic as opposed to tactical
measures. It concludes with a section on police
legitimacy, which is more about the how of
policing rather than the what, but which, it was
felt, is crucial to improving effectiveness.
What the police do

Popular perceptions of what the police do tend to
focus on their role in responding to a constant
3
This has recently re-emerged in public discourse in response to the current

climate of financial constraint and concerns about maintaining a visible police
presence on the streets.
stream of emergency calls, mostly from the

public. As an emergency service, the police
respond to calls 24/7 on a case-by-case basis,
dealing with each one individually. Commonly
termed response policing, it focuses on the here
and now, providing immediate help to victims and
(potentially) arresting suspects. It constitutes what
police officers often refer to as real policing.
Although response policing constitutes the bread
and butter of everyday policing, there is in fact
virtually no evidence on its effects on crime
(Committee on Law and Justice, 2004).
Considerable research has been undertaken in
the past to establish the degree to which the
police spend their time directly responding to or
preventing crime (see, for example, Bittner, 1990).
This research, mainly undertaken in the 1970s
and then 1980s, highlighted the large proportion
of police time devoted to duties other than crime
control, including incidents not classified as crime
or leading to criminal proceedings, and time spent
in processing cases and administration (Brodeur,
2010). According to the British Crime Survey, only
a minority of contacts between the police and the
public involve actual criminal incidents (Skogan,
1990), although research also suggests that just
over half of police work is in some way
crime-related (i.e. incidents that might involve or
lead to a crime) (Shapland and Vagg, 1990). The
Greater Manchester twitter experiment referred to
earlier suggests little has changed.
Research on the role of the police has consistently
highlighted their wider mandate and service
function in order maintenance more generally (for
example crowd control, responding to
emergencies etc.) and the amount of time they
spend on front line, public-facing activities. 3 A
10
recent National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA)

study of neighbourhood and response teams in the
UK found that public-facing work in the community
accounted for about 44 per cent of officers time.
This included responding to incidents, taking
statements, foot patrol and community
engagement. Administrative work accounted for
nearly a third of officer time and a further quarter of
their time was spent in the custody suite or at
court, in training, briefings or meetings, travelling or
on breaks (Mclean and Hillier, 2010).
A key issue raised by research exploring what the
police do has been the disjointed, incident
-focused nature of police work, with incidents
being treated in large part as unconnected. This
incident focus stems not just from the way in
which the public report incidents but also from the
way in which such incidents are dealt with (as
issues which do or do not merit criminal
prosecution). However this limits the capacity to
develop a more strategic picture, over time, of the
inter-connectedness, persistence or escalation of
problems and can be a key impediment to
developing more long-term, sustainable
approaches to reducing crime. An approach more
able to develop that picture would require the
development of new skills in front line officers (see
Her Majestys Inspector of Constabulary, 2012),
but with the exception of various kinds of
problem-oriented Policing (see below), this aspect
of police work has been relatively neglected.
Does more police mean

less crime?
Before looking in detail at how effective the police
are in reducing crime, it is worth looking briefly at
the evidence on the impact that increases or
decreases in total police officer numbers have on

crime rates. On the whole, the evidence that
additional numbers of police reduce crime rates
is inconclusive (Bradford, 2011), although the
absence of any police presence (e.g. as a result
of strike action) has been shown to increase
crime (Sherman and Eck, 2002). Some studies
have suggested that increased police numbers
may be associated with lower property and other
acquisitive crime, with one study suggesting that
an estimated 10 per cent increase in officers
leads to a reduction of around three per cent in
crime (Levitt, 1997), but the evidence of an
association between police numbers and violent
crime seems to be more ambiguous (Bradford,
2011). Efforts to increase the speed of response
to urgent incidents have also been shown to have
little impact on detection rates as the delay in
calling the police tends to outweigh any increase
in the chances of catching the perpetrator that
reduced response times might achieve (Skogan
and Frydl, 2004). In practice, it is difficult to
separate out the effect of increased numbers
from what these additional officers actually do.
What works in policing

to reduce crime?
On the whole, the police service and its partners
do not routinely use research evidence to inform
their practice in tackling crime. In a review of 150
entries to the UK Tilley Award, which recognise
innovative crime fighting projects, fewer than a
third explicitly drew on evidence in developing
their projects (Bullock and Tilley, 2009).
Nonetheless there is now a significant, and
growing, body of research on what works in
policing. Much of this research has been
undertaken in North America, where policing and
the context in which the police perform their

functions differ from the UK, but there are
important lessons to be learnt from this now
extensive body of research. This section draws on
the findings of a number of reviews of this
evidence and is divided into the following four
sub-sections:
Traditional approaches to policing.
Targeted policing.
Maximising effective resource allocation.
Building relationships with the community.
Traditional approaches
to policing
The traditional approach to policing tends to
allocate resources across a jurisdiction and cover
all crime types, is reactive rather than proactive
and favours deterrence through law enforcement
rather than taking account of different patterns of
crime across time and space. In terms of how
traditional policing impacts on crime, there are
essentially four different strategies that have been
the subject of research:
Random patrol and response.
Stop and search.
Investigation and detection.
Intensive enforcement.
Random patrol and response

A considerable body of early research on police
effectiveness in reducing crime was devoted to
exploring the effectiveness of random patrol in
preventing and detecting crime, either as a general
deterrent or by answering calls in the shortest
possible time (Skogan and Frydl, 2004). This
research demonstrated the very small chance that
11
random patrols will come across an incident in

progress. It was famously estimated that, on the
basis of burglary rates (in the 1980s) and evenly
distributed patrol, an officer in London could
expect to pass within a hundred yards of a burglary
in progress once in every eight years (Clarke and
Hough, 1984). In practice, random patrol is less
about deterring or catching offenders and more
about providing a symbolic presence that
proclaims a state of order and reassures the public.
The research evidence on foot patrols does not
seem to coincide with public perceptions, which
see patrols as principally synonymous with
preventing crime and securing community
safety (see for example Noaks, 2000).
According to the British Crime Survey (2002/03),
when prioritising different aspects of police work,
the public place foot patrols third after
responding to emergency calls (placed first) and
detecting and arresting offenders (placed
second). When asked to rank which measures
would most improve community safety, the public
tend to place more police patrolling on foot well
above any other measure (Wakefield, 2006). This
helps to explain why politicians from all parties
are keen to maintain or better still increase the
number of bobbies on the beat.
Research also shows that the public expect police
patrols to do more than just prevent crime. A
community survey undertaken as part of the
Policing in London study carried out in 2002
found that two thirds of respondents (67 per cent)
thought patrols should focus on detecting and
preventing crime, but half (49 per cent) wanted
them to focus on reassurance, a quarter (25 per
cent) on work in schools and a further quarter (24
per cent) on gathering local intelligence (FitzGerald
12
et al, 2002). A fifth (20 per cent) cited dealing with

disturbances and 15 per cent mentioned
providing advice on crime prevention.
Furthermore, the public believe that the number
and/or visibility of officers are more effective in
tackling crime than any other intervention,
including addressing the root causes of crime
(Wakefield, 2006).
In reality, the evidence on the deterrent effect of
the visible presence of officers on foot is mixed.
Early research showed that on the whole neither
car patrols (Kelling et al,1974) nor foot patrols
(Kelling, 1981) reduced crime rates, although the
latter was found to improve community relations
and reduce (to a small extent) fear of crime (Pate,
1986). Despite notable exceptions in relation to
specific crimes in the US, directed patrols have
helped to reduce the carrying of illegal weapons
(Koper and Mayo-Wilson, 2006) and in the UK,
additional foot patrols have reduced personal
robberies (Jones and Tilley, 2004) the general
view is that foot patrols do little to reduce crime
overall. However, where directed patrols are
deployed as one of a number of tactics to reduce
crime in hotspots (or better still micro-locations) or
as part of a problem-oriented policing initiative,
the impact tends to be more positive (Ratcliffe,
2011). The most encouraging evidence comes
from the Philadelphia foot patrol experiment,
where targeted foot patrols were found to
significantly reduce violent crime (Ratcliffe et al,
2011). The key ingredients seem to be dosage
the more focussed or concentrated patrols are,
the more likely they will have a suppressive effect
what officers actually do on patrol to increase
the risk (or perceived risk) of apprehension and
how patrols are combined with other tactics to
address wider problems.
Stop and search

Stop and search powers enable the police to allay
or confirm suspicions about individuals and
detect, for example, those suspected of carrying
weapons, stolen goods or going equipped for
stealing. In practice, the law requires the
execution of such powers to be based on fact,
information and/or intelligence and not on the
subjective whim of individual officers. Research
shows that only a small minority of searches result
in an arrest (see The Police Foundation, 2012),
with variations according to the reason for the
stop. Arrest rates for those suspected of
possessing stolen property tend to be higher than
those for carrying drugs (primarily cannabis).
A low detection rate alone does not necessarily
undermine the use of stop and search powers for
crime prevention if their use disrupts and deters
criminal activity rather than simply detecting it
(House of Commons Home Affairs Committee,
2005). However research shows that searches
reduce the number of disruptable crimes by just
0.2% and its use in disrupting drug markets is
largely ineffectual as officers primarily target users
rather than dealers (Miller et al, 2000). Blanket
enforcement crackdowns on neighbourhood drug
markets may even be counter-productive, with
violence actually increasing following market
disruption as new organised crime groups
compete for territory (Weisburd and Eck, 1999).
Research does however suggest that searches
may be more effective in deterring crime when
used intensively in a particular location over a
short period of time (Miller et al, 2000).
Investigation and detection

Analysing drug or stolen goods markets is a
relatively recent development in crime control
13
generally and in criminal investigation more

specifically. Traditionally, the deployment of
investigative resources amounted primarily to
responding to crimes reported to the police
(largely by the public) and identifying the
perpetrators of an offence. The main aim was to
gather evidence, such as witness statements,
fingerprints or CCTV images, which could be
used in court to secure a conviction. This
approach is based on a deterrence model
whereby offending is discouraged by increasing
the chance that an offender will be caught.
Catching offenders is a core function of detective
work, but research suggests that detectives fail to
clear up most cases. The vast majority of property
crimes and a significant proportion of violent crime
are unsolved (Telep and Weisburd, 2012). On the
whole, if a suspect is not caught at the scene of
the crime, then he/she is rarely identified.
Detectives are however a potentially useful source
of intelligence, particularly in relation to repeat
offending, and it has been suggested that they
could be used more proactively, such as helping
to identify the future plans of known criminal
networks. This would amount to a shift from
producing evidence to secure a conviction
towards a role that is more about producing
knowledge or intelligence about suspects and
their associates and information about the
circumstances of their current and future
offending behaviour (Maguire, 2008).
In todays rapidly changing world, where
communities are more diverse and fragmented,
governments are increasingly concerned with
identifying and managing risk. This requires more
lasting solutions that prevent behaviour being
repeated by or against specific individuals (i.e.
4
Although zero tolerance policing was greeted with scepticism by British police
professionals sensitive to the impact of such an approach on police-community
relationships, the influence of the related broken windows rationale has been
evident in the development of policy and practice to tackle antisocial behaviour
in the UK. To date, there is no evidence to show that this approach has led to a
reduction in related crime.
offenders or victims) or in certain places (i.e. areas

of high crime) rather than relying on arrest,
conviction and punishment (Maguire, 2008). This
more strategic approach to targeting law
enforcement resources requires relatively
sophisticated forms of data sharing across a
number of agencies and is discussed in more
detail in the section below on targeted policing.
Intensive enforcement
Commonly referred to as either a zero tolerance
(see Weatheritt, 1998) or broken windows
(Wilson and Kelling, 1982) approach to law
enforcement, intensive forms of law enforcement
are often associated with tough crime-fighting
rhetoric. 4 In practice, however, these approaches
are based on the idea that responding
immediately and consequentially to incivilities
such as vandalism, street drinking and
prostitution, will avert a downward spiral of
disorder, which occurs when communities, in fear
of more serious offending, start to withdraw their
willingness to intervene (Wilson and Kelling,
1982). While the link between incivilities and more
serious crime has been challenged (Taylor, 2001),
focusing police resources on incivilities (more
commonly referred to as antisocial behaviour in
the UK) has become a popular government
response to a legitimate public concern.
In general, intensive enforcement activity (and
any deterrent effect it may have) is not only
unsustainable in the longer term but in its
simplest form does not, on the whole, reduce
crime or incivilities (Skogan, 1992). However, its
effectiveness depends largely on what tactics
are adopted and how they are deployed
(Skogan, 1990). The best known example of
intensive enforcement was introduced in New
14
York, where its impact has been a source of

considerable contention.
The New York experience

During the 1990s and beyond, the crime rate
in New York fell sharply. A series of
commentators have attempted to explain this
fall, including a succession of City Mayors
and Police Commissioners. The main
difficulty lies in separating out the effect of
intensive/aggressive enforcement activity
from a number of other changes introduced
at the same time. One of these was the
introduction of CompStat, which focuses on
increasing the accountability of individual
officers for their performance in achieving
crime reduction targets (Bratton, 1998). In
practice, CompStat scrutinises real-time
crime data and focuses police activity in
specific hotspots and therefore goes beyond
the intensification of enforcement activity.
Although the evidence suggests that the
targeted work created by CompStat may
indeed have contributed to reductions in
crime in New York, the evidence of its impact
in other American cities is mixed. CompStats
use can also lead to an over-emphasis on
holding officers to account for performance
targets (and the manipulation of data that this
can incentivise) rather than solving problems.
Explanations for the reduction in overall crime
in New York remain strongly contested. In
addition to policing, it has been attributed
variously to drug market changes, high rates
of imprisonment and increased supervision of
persistent offenders. The claims for the
success of the specific style of policing in the
city have also been undermined by

simultaneous falls in crime in other North
American and European cities, where
different approaches have prevailed.
Importantly, the use of focused enforcement
activity to tackle crime and disorder in New
York was also criticised for resulting in
increased complaints about police
misconduct and a loss of public trust.
Targeted policing
The limited impact of random patrol, reactive and
intensive enforcement on crime rates led to
attempts to improve the effectiveness of the
police in reducing crime by concentrating
resources on specific crimes, criminals, victims
and places. This led to the development of much
more focused resource allocation through, in
particular, hotspots policing, tackling repeat
victimisation and focused deterrence. These are
discussed in turn.
Hotspots policing
Initiatives that take account of the uneven
distribution of crime between and within
neighbourhoods and target resources on
micro-locations (a small number of streets, a
block of flats or even two or three addresses) are
commonly referred to as hotspots policing
(Weisburd and Braga, 2006). The influential
Minneapolis Hot Spots Experiment, for example,
found that 50 per cent of calls for service came
from only 3.3 per cent of locations and advocated
focusing interventions (in this case increased
patrol) on such micro-locations rather than whole
neighbourhoods. It delivered clear, if modest,
general deterrent effects as measured by
15
reductions in crime calls and observations of

disorder (Sherman et al, 1989), as have other
similar initiatives (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995).
While there is evidence that focusing resources in
hotspots reduces crime, initiatives that simply rely
on using patrol and law enforcement in these
hotspots tend to be less effective (Taylor et al,
2011), the impact tending to be small and
short-lived (Koper, 1995). The effectiveness of
hotspots policing clearly varies according to the
approaches and tactics that are used; it is rarely
sufficient simply to concentrate police patrol
resources in specific locations (Rosenbaum, 2006).
A frequent component of hotspots policing
initiatives is the introduction of measures that
reduce the opportunities for committing crime.
Commonly known as situational crime
prevention, such measures include installing
better locks on doors and windows (target
hardening), increasing surveillance through for
example installing CCTV cameras and looking after
or altering the environment by for example
cleaning up graffiti, removing abandoned cars or
improving street lighting. There is now
considerable evidence to support the effectiveness
of situational crime prevention (which cannot be
reviewed here), which where included partially
helps to explain the convincing body of evidence
that broadly supports the strategic targeting of
micro-locations (see also Bottoms, 2012).
Reducing the opportunities for crime is sometimes
contrasted with approaches that attempt to
change the socio-economic context of high crime
neighbourhoods. This school of thought
acknowledges the importance of developing
lasting solutions (Rosenbaum, 2006) based on a
detailed understanding of the multiple and
5
In the British context, this tends to be particularly influenced by social housing

provision and housing allocation practice (Bottoms, 2012).
persistent problems commonly found in such

communities. 5 Such problems include:
High concentrations of poverty and ill-health.
A poor physical environment.
Low-income families.
Poor performing schools.
Limited neighbourhood resources and

informal control.
Active drug markets.
Barriers to offender resettlement.
Although often characterised as polarised

approaches, researchers have begun to highlight
the potential for a more integrated approach that
takes greater account of the social context of
hotspots, in particular the need for greater
recognition that it is the social characteristics of
hotspots that account for their longevity
(Weisburd, 2012). This suggests that there may
be some potential for more targeted
socio-economic interventions in micro-locations.
As yet little is known about why hotspots are
attractive targets to offenders and what role, if any,
residents collective efficacy plays in this. The term
collective efficacy is used to describe the degree
to which neighbours know and trust one another
and are willing to intervene (together or individually)
to protect their neighbourhood from crime and
related problems. It acts as a protective factor in
neighbourhoods that might otherwise experience
high levels of crime (Sampson and Raudenbusch,
1999). Recent research, which has begun to
explore whether collective efficacy is also protective
in micro-locations (Bottoms, 2012; Weisburd,
2012), suggests that offenders are aware of the
willingness of local residents to intervene or watch
out for each other. Thus a street, for example, with
16
greater collective efficacy may be a less attractive

location for committing offences than another, even
within a high crime neighbourhood. This suggests
there may be potential benefits in strengthening
collective efficacy in micro-location hotspots
(Bottoms, 2012), particularly in areas of high
population turnover, where length of residence,
social organisation and mutual trust, may be
considerably less.
Although the evidence on hotspots policing is
encouraging, there are a number of issues that
need addressing. For example, little is known about
the degree to which sustained targeting results in
offenders engaging in other forms of crime. Also,
analyses of hotspots based on reported crime data
are limited in terms of identifying patterns that are
not location-specific (for example e-crime and
fraud) or are under-reported (for example, domestic
abuse and hate crime) (Rosenbaum, 2006). There
are also limits to the degree to which managing
localised crime hotspots can address criminality
that transcends local, regional or even national
boundaries. However, research has shown that
feared displacement effects whereby the problem
moves to other neighbourhoods are rarely a
problem and indeed in some instances can have
the opposite effect of reducing crime in
neighbouring areas (Braga et al, 2012; Bowers et
al, 2011). This absence of displacement has been
explained by the fact that crime hotspots also tend
to be hotspots of offender residence and that
offenders are reluctant to commit offences in
unfamiliar areas (Weisburd et al, 2006).
Focusing resources on places for which there is
evidence of concentrated demand has an
operational logic that is appealing to many police
managers, but most studies have tended to
neglect the reaction of the community to
concentrated crime control efforts. While

community members may generally support the
concentration of resources to address crime, care
needs to be taken to ensure that hotspots
policing does not become overly enforcementfocused (Rosenbaum 2006). Although arrests will
always be a central element in policing, the
aggressive use of enforcement approaches to
address problems that are not considered the
most damaging in a community, or in ways that
appear heavy-handed or unjust, can have lasting
consequences for police-community relations
(Karn, 2007) and ultimately police legitimacy. Such
approaches can also disproportionately increase
the entry of predominantly low-income, often
minority ethnic men into the criminal justice
system. Political pressure for short-term gains
therefore needs to be carefully considered
alongside the potential risk that particular types of
hotspots policing can undermine the long-term
stability of neighbourhoods (Weisburd, 2012).
A thorough understanding of the dynamics of the
social context in which resources are being
deployed may help to mitigate some of these
limitations. Some of the most promising
approaches to hotspots policing integrate
socio-economic interventions and social and
situational crime prevention measures to reduce
crime with measures that increase the resilience of
local residents. They also incorporate the strong
body of evidence that shows that what matters is
not just whether more police resources are
assigned to hotspots, but what resources are best
deployed (from what agencies/ professions/
sectors) to address a well-understood problem and
how (Rosenbaum, 2006). This more integrated
approach, more akin to problem-oriented policing,
is discussed further below.
17
Tackling repeat victimisation

A further approach that aims to focus resources
more effectively is based on research that
highlights the increased risk of being
re-victimised. Repeat incidents account for a high
proportion of the total number of most categories
of offences: one per cent of people experience
59 per cent of personal crimes and two per cent
experience 41 per cent of non-vehicle-related
property crime (Pease, 1998). The risk of
re-victimisation also tends to increase with each
experience of crime. Targeting repeat victims is
therefore seen as an effective way to reduce
crime, and has been shown to be particularly
effective in reducing the rate of repeat
victimisation for burglary (Grove et al, 2012).
Research also shows that in the short term, crime
risks increase for near-neighbours as well as the
victim and that, at least for burglary, the offences
are often committed by the same perpetrator
(Burnasco, 2008). As a result, in the mid-1990s all
police forces in England and Wales were obliged
to develop strategies to reduce repeat
victimisation (Nicholas and Farrell, 2008) and more
recently a number of forces in the UK, including
Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan
Police Service, introducing so-called Super
Cocooning projects, which focus activity on
preventing repeat and near-repeat victimisation.
This is intended to allocate resources according to
risk while giving victims (and potential victims)
practical help and support (Nicholas and Farrell,
2008). In line with the available evidence (Grove et
al, 2012), it has been claimed that they have had
a significant impact (Chainey, 2012).
Work to prevent repeat and near-repeat
victimisation is a form of predictive policing, which
uses data from a range of sources to predict

where and when crime is likely to take place in the
future. This approach is most commonly
associated with work by the police in Los Angeles
(LA) in the US, where patrols are deployed on the
basis of a victimisation risk assessment. It builds
on a hotspots approach by offering more
specificity in time and place and thus enabling
police officers to use problem-solving approaches
in the right place at the right time. In LA, the
model focuses on burglary and theft of, and from,
a motor vehicle, but in Memphis, for example, a
predictive approach has also been used to tackle
violent crime.
The crime reduction effect of predictive policing is
yet to be rigorously tested (Telep and Weisburd,
2012), although in the US the National Institute of
Justice has funded a programme of work to
measure its impact that will contribute to the
evidence base in due course (US Department of
Justice, 2009). Within the UK, in addition to
existing initiatives to tackle repeat victimisation, a
pilot project based on the LA model was launched
by Kent Police in December 2012 and
subsequently rolled out across the force
(Whitehead, 2013).
Focused deterrence
An alternative to targeting repeat victims is to
focus resources on repeat offenders. In the US,
some initiatives have adopted a focused
deterrence or pulling levers approach, which has
demonstrated significant reductions in crime
through targeting multi-agency resources on a
small number of high risk/prolific offenders (Braga
and Weisburd, 2012). The approach is based on
increasing the certainty, swiftness and severity of
punishment by directly engaging offenders and
18
potential offenders and offering incentives to

comply with the law as well as clear
consequences for not doing so (Kennedy, 2009).
The findings from these studies add to the
evidence in support of the deterrent effect of
police enforcement activity that heightens
offenders perceived risk of apprehension (Durlauf
and Nagin, 2011), but also stress that
complementary crime reduction mechanisms also
play a key role in contributing to the large effects
on crime rates observed (Braga and Weisburd,
2012). These include:
Reducing the situational opportunities for

violence.
Deflecting offenders from crime.
Increasing access to social services,

employment opportunities, housing and drug
treatment.
Increasing collective efficacy and natural

surveillance within communities.
Treating offenders with respect and dignity to

encourage greater compliance.
The evidential success of pulling levers

approaches has led to a new model of crime
reduction in the US termed the New Criminal
Justice.
Maximising effective
resource allocation
Economic and political pressures to increase
efficiency, improve performance and reduce costs
has led to more strategic approaches or models
of policing, in particular intelligence-led policing
and problem-oriented policing. Drawing on some
of the more targeted approaches discussed
above, they constitute a more strategic approach
to crime reduction.
Intelligence-led policing
Intelligence-led policing aims to reduce crime by:
Collecting relevant and reliable information

from a variety of sources to provide a clear
and accurate picture of the most pressing
current and future crime problems.
Prioritising them and planning targeted

responses to them.
Implementing the plans and evaluating the

process and the outcomes.
Feeding back the knowledge and experience

gained (Ratcliffe, 2011).
Four intelligence products are created: strategic

assessments, tactical assessments, target profiles
and problem profiles. Regular meetings of Tasking
and Control Groups (TCGs) are held to decide
how to best target resources to priority people
(e.g. prolific offenders), places (e.g. crime
hotspots) and activities (e.g. night time economy).
Intelligence-led policing was first pioneered in the
UK by Kent Police Service in the early 1990s. In
practice however, cultural resistance and the
significant reorganisation of officer roles and
functions meant that Kents embracing of
intelligence-led policing remained an exception to
the rule until the introduction of the National
Intelligence Model (NIM) a decade later (Maguire,
2008). NIM is the major vehicle for delivering
intelligence-led policing, variations of which are
now being used in all forces. Introduced in part as
a response to the increasingly sophisticated,
transnational and mobile nature of criminality, the
NIM has institutionalised intelligence-led policing.
Based on strategic assessments of current and
predicted crime threats and tactical assessments
of targets and problems, its aim is to develop
solutions to crime problems outside the criminal

justice system, such as disrupting criminal markets
and the criminal networks that control them.
With less than a quarter of all recorded crime
leading to detection and a sanction, finding
alternative ways to fight crime outside the criminal
justice system should be a key priority. But
although the NIM is seen by most officers as
successful in tackling the main problems in an area
(Maguire and John, 1995), it has, like
intelligence-led policing, not been independently
evaluated in terms of its impact on crime (Maguire,
2008) let alone how relevant it might be in tackling
new, emerging crime patterns. Embracing partners
who focus on risks and problems identified
through the analysis of multiple sources of data
relating to patterns of crime, as piloted in Greater
Manchester (known as Greater Manchester
Against Crime), would help to shift the NIM
towards a more problem-oriented approach,
which is discussed below.
Problem-oriented policing
A recent review of hotspots policing initiatives by
the Campbell Collaboration provides convincing
evidence that while, overall, hotspots policing
strategies can be effective in reducing crime, they
are more likely to do so where interventions alter
the characteristics and dynamics of hotspots
through problem-oriented policing interventions.
Problem-oriented policing emerged as a more
proactive alternative to traditional response
policing and more effective than simply focusing
enforcement approaches on hotspots. While still
identifying problem hotspots, problem-oriented
policing places more emphasis on understanding
the connections between problems and why they
are occurring, tackling problems identified by local
19
communities that have been resistant to other,

more conventional responses (Goldstein, 1990).
To an extent a problem-solving approach is
embedded in the National Intelligence Model (and
potentially in some investigation practice), and is
evident, in particular, in the way analysis is
intended to inform multi-agency tasking meetings
(Maguire and John, 2003), so problem-solving has
become part of policing practice.
Problem-oriented policing requires a thorough
understanding of the problems and the
effectiveness of strategies to address them. This
involves an analysis of their causes, identifying
strategies for intervention (beyond law
enforcement) and involving other agencies and
the community in delivering them. It also requires
checking whether the intended benefits have
accrued (Tilley, 2010). The main intention is to
reduce crime and disorder proactively and
sustainably by dealing with recurrent or
connected problems, rather than responding
incident by incident, and improving community
confidence in the effectiveness of agencies by
responding to their immediate and most pressing
concerns. The capacity for problem-solving
approaches to reduce local crime rates in
hotspots is now widely accepted, especially when
driven by community concerns (Tuffin, 2006),
although their effectiveness has in the past
suffered from implementation failure (Quinton and
Morris, 2008) and a tendency for the police to
rush to solution before securing a full
understanding of the problem and how best to
resolve it (Myhill, 2006).
A recent systematic review concluded that
problem-oriented policing initiatives built on sound
data analysis and research have had an
20
overwhelmingly positive impact on crime

rates (Weisburd et al, 2010), although the
evidence is less clear about how and why they
have worked in some circumstances but not in
others (Tilley, 2006). Unfortunately, in practice the
police and their partners often fail to conduct
systematic, in-depth problem analysis (Telep and
Weisburd, 2012), revisit problems and learn
lessons highlighted during implementation, or
effectively implement evidence-based
interventions (Tilley, 2010). The effective
integration of multi-agency information and
interventions also remains a significant challenge
and analytical capacity remains one of the
potentially weakest elements in the
implementation of a problem-solving approach.
Scanning, Analysis, Response

and Assessment
Scanning, Analysis, Response and
Assessment (SARA) is the model most often
used to guide the design and implementation
of multi-agency, problem-solving crime
reduction initiatives. The model comprises an
iterative process of:
Identifying community and organisational

concerns (scanning).
Investigating priority problems, such as

exploring in depth what, where, when,
who, how and why the problem is
happening (analysis).
Developing tailored, evidence-based

interventions to address the problems
identified and their causes (response).
Evaluating the implementation and

outcomes achieved (assessment) and
then redefining and refining those
problems and strategies in response to

attempts to address them.
SARA has been criticised for being
over-simplistic (Bullock and Tilley, 2009), but
it nevertheless provides a logical stepwise
approach to embedding evidence in
problem-oriented policing.
The growth in the analysis infrastructure within UK
police forces, using software for the collection,
mapping and analysis of crime and disorder data
and other local information to inform an
understanding of local problems, has been
assisted in part by the recognition of the need to
understand better the connections between
incidents. There have been successful initiatives
that share data between police and partner
agencies, bringing together different kinds of
information to supplement recorded crime data.
An initiative in Cardiff Accident and Emergency
Departments in hospitals, for example, actively
collected data from victims of violence to develop
better responses to tackling violence (including
unreported incidents) (Florence et al, 2011).
However, attempts to replicate this elsewhere
have struggled to create the conditions for the
successful provision and use of similar quality
data (Davison et al, 2010).
Partnership working
A crucial component of problem-oriented policing
is the role of partners in delivering
problem-solving interventions. The police do not
possess all the information needed to assess all
the problems and their causes, nor all the means
to coordinate and deliver sustainable solutions.
This realisation has been a key driver in the
21
development of multi-agency partnership

approaches to crime reduction. Such
arrangements recognise the complexity of crime
and disorder problems and the greater capacity
that a number of agencies working together can
bring to bear on them. In England and Wales this
approach has been embedded in legislation since
1998 when the Crime and Disorder Act
introduced Crime and Disorder Reduction
Partnerships (now referred to as Community
Safety Partnerships) and other partnerships such
as the Drug Interventions Programme and
Integrated Offender Management initiatives.
Although it is difficult to identify the particular
contribution of partnership mechanisms to
effective crime reduction, a recent assessment of
partnerships largely set up to reduce violence in
the US concluded that partnership working is
effective (Berry et al, 2011). On the basis of this
body of evidence, the most effective initiatives
seem to be those that focus collaborative work
around well-defined problems, develop common
values between agencies, embed researchers in
partnerships and provide robust data analysis to
guide decision-making (McGarrell, 2010). In the
US, there are concerns about whether partnership
working is sustainable without any statutory
underpinning; partnerships have crumbled without
follow-up funding (Klofas et al, 2010). In contrast
in the UK, where there is a statutory basis for
partnership working, such arrangements are
sustained over the longer term (Home Office,
2011), although recent reforms in probation,
education and health along with cuts in
government expenditure may well begin to
undermine this.
Building relationships
with the community
The fourth and final part of this section exploring
the role of the police in reducing crime focuses on
the role communities can play.
Community policing
The concept of community policing first
emerged in the 1970s, and has subsequently
built up widespread support. Problem-oriented
policing (see above) and community
engagement (see below) are both central to
effective community policing, which is built
around the idea of enhanced local
accountability. Community policing tends to
mean different things to different people and
lacks a clear definition, while the term
community is itself notoriously slippery
(Tilley, 2008). And as with other models of
policing, there is considerable overlap.
As Fielding (2009) argues, to some community
policing is simply an alternative to an
enforcement-based approach whereas to
others it is an approach that actively involves
the public in crime control and improves
communication between the public and the
police. Despite this, the principles
underpinning community policing have been
widely adopted and community policing has
become, in the US at least, a new orthodoxy
for cops (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994).
22
The Chicago Alternative

Policing Strategy
A well-known example of community policing
in the US is the Chicago Alternative Policing
Strategy (CAPS), where the community and
its concerns are at the heart of the approach
and where priority setting and
problem-solving is devolved to local residents
and neighbourhood level officers (Skogan,
2006). CAPS was set up in 1993 in five police
districts in Chicago with diverse populations in
terms of race, ethnicity and socio-economic
status. Based on the premise that to reduce
local concerns about crime the police need to
work together with partner agencies to
address issues identified by community
members, CAPS aimed to bridge the gap
between police understandings of problems
or their organisational tendency to redefine
them as non-crime-related and the
understandings of local citizens. It comprised
several key components:
The integration of crime control and

prevention, incorporating authoritative
and impartial law enforcement and rapid
response with proactive problem-solving.
Teams of response and beat officers

engaging in proactive problem-solving.
Police officers working the same beat on

the same watch each day to ensure
continuity.
Involvement of the community at all levels

to identify local issues and problems and
help set priorities.
Formalisation of problem-solving, with

officers creating a beat profile of the
districts characteristics and chronic

problems and identifying resources to
address them. Together with other
agencies and the community, the police
prioritise problems, identify strategies and
measure success.
All officers, together with their

supervisors, receive training in
problem-solving, interpersonal
communication, partnership working
and leadership skills.
Neighbourhood level data is analysed to

map crime hotspots and track other
neighbourhood problems, which is
shared with local residents.
Continuous communication with the

community through newsletters,
meetings, surveys, focuses groups and
hotlines, to secure feedback and
suggestions for improvement.
Identification of the components of

change needed to fully implement the
strategy with concomitant action plans.
Independent process and outcome

evaluation.
CAPS has produced sustained

improvements in confidence in the police,
particularly among black and Hispanic
communities, as well as reductions in fear of
crime and victimization, but has been less
obviously successful in delivering sustained
reductions in recorded crime rates (Skogan
and Frydl, 2004).
23
Community policing has also become prominent

in England and Wales in recent years, first as
reassurance policing and subsequently as
neighbourhood policing (Fielding, 2009).
Reassurance policing was introduced at a time of
increasing concern about low levels of confidence
in the police. Its main aim was to address what
was termed the reassurance gap, which is
where public concern about crime continued to
be high despite a falling crime rate. The National
Reassurance Policing pilot, implemented across
16 sites in England between 2003 and 2005, was
also guided by an understanding that certain
incidents of crime and disorder can act as
warning signs, particularly in public spaces,
about the perceived levels of risk to which local
residents may be exposed (Innes, 2004). It tasked
local teams with:
Building a familiar, visible and approachable

policing presence in communities through
targeted foot patrol.
Identifying the issues that mattered most to

people.
Developing problem-solving approaches to

addressing local issues which might not
otherwise be considered priorities.
The pilots delivered a net increase in public

confidence of 12 per cent compared to
comparison sites as well as improvements in
public perceptions of crime levels perceived levels
of antisocial behaviour and better levels of
community engagement. The increases in
confidence were particularly associated with joint
problem solving, better community engagement
and targeted foot patrol (Tuffin et al, 2006). There
was little evidence of any reduction in recorded
crime rates, although overall crime did fall in two
sites, but there were significant reductions in

self-reported victimisation rates, which is probably
a better measure of impact than changes in the
recorded crime rate (Tuffin, 2006). Importantly
however, the positive outcomes achieved in the
pilot study were less discernible when
reassurance policing was rolled out nationally as
neighbourhood policing. This was due in part to
the implementation difficulties encountered,
although the evaluation of the national initiative
was also less robust (Quinton and Morris, 2008).
Community engagement
Central to the delivery of both problem-oriented
policing and community policing is effective
community engagement. By working together
with local residents, the police can increase their
sense of security, their resilience to crime and their
confidence in the police (Lloyd and Foster, 2009).
Effective community engagement ensures that the
police respond to community concerns and are
held to account for their actions. Systematic
reviews have produced strong evidence that
community engagement reduces calls about
disorder and antisocial behaviour and increases
peoples sense of safety (Myhill, 2006). The
evidence on its impact on recorded crime is more
equivocal, with some initiatives producing
substantial and others more limited effects (Lloyd
and Foster, 2009). There is, however, consistently
strong evidence of improvements in
police-community relations and community
perceptions of the police, and fairly strong
evidence of improvements in the attitudes and
behaviour of police officers, all of which help to
improve police legitimacy.
Efforts to reduce crime, whether through
problem-solving or other approaches, emphasise
24
the importance of promoting trust and confidence

through fair and equitable policing. However
engaging with communities to improve trust and
confidence requires substantial effort and takes
time, particularly in areas where there have been
poor relations with the police in the past (Myhill,
2006). A common concern has been that beat
meetings, surveys and other conventional
engagement strategies only reach a particular
segment of the population and are resource
intensive (Lowe and Innes, 2012). They often fail
to build links with sections of the local population
that may have more strained relationships with the
police and hence adequately to take account of
their (often quite different) needs. This raises
serious questions about setting local priorities.
Nevertheless, they remain a key mechanism for
managing perceptions of insecurity, fostering
confidence in the police, and increasing local
capacity to address problems and are significant
in reducing calls to address incidents of disorder.
The development of specific methods of
engagement to establish the publics concerns
and understand how to respond to them has
lagged behind the allocation of resources to do
so, which can undermine police officers
confidence in their value (Lowe and Innes, 2012).
Much community engagement only involves those
already engaging with the police rather than
explicitly targeting sections of the community with
which the police might otherwise have little
contact (Lloyd and Foster, 2009). Although there
have been a variety of initiatives to improve active
levels of participation in decision-making, such as
through social and online media (Ray et al, 2012)
or participatory budgeting (Greater Manchester
Police, 2009), there is still a clear need for
continued development of a variety of approaches
to engagement that enables crime reduction

initiatives to draw on a diversity of local
knowledge and experience.
Legitimacy and police effectiveness

The relationship between the public and the police
goes beyond the formers confidence in the latter.
Also significant is the wider issue of legitimacy,
which can be broadly defined as the right to rule
and the recognition by the ruled of that right
(Jackson et al, 2012). While police legitimacy is in
itself important, it also goes hand in hand with
effectiveness in reducing crime by both enhancing
compliance with the law and promoting
co-operation with the police (Mazerolle and
Bennett, et al, 2013; Myhill and Quinton, 2011). If
people are reluctant to co-operate with the police,
they are less likely to report incidents (which can
create a climate of impunity for offenders,
increasing the vulnerability of those living amongst
them), provide them with intelligence, act as
witnesses, or co-operate with them in other ways.
Public mistrust of the police can also be
interpreted by officers as suspicious, which can
further alienate them from their communities by
creating a negative spiral of mutual mistrust.
While the concept of legitimacy is elusive and
multifaceted (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012), there
is now a growing understanding of how to
promote it. Research consistently shows that the
fairness, respect and dignity with which people
are treated by the police, and the degree to which
people feel that their views are considered prior to
police decision-making, have considerable
influence on whether people see the police as
exercising legitimate authority, regardless of the
outcome of the interaction (Tyler, 2004; Mazerolle
and Antrobus et al, 2013). Or, to put it another
25
way, a little bit of being nice during police-citizen

interactions goes a long way (Mazerolle and
Bennett et al, 2013). This is in line with police
officers experience; if you treat people fairly and
with respect, they are more likely to co-operate,
follow your instructions and comply with the law
(Myhill and Quinton, 2011). If, however, officers
actions do not coincide with how the public think
they should behave, their actions will be seen as
illegitimate and their authority to enforce the law
will be undermined. The primary issue raised in
complaints against the police, for example, is not
that the contact or action was unjustified but that
the demeanour of the officer was unacceptable
(Fielding and Innes, 2006; May et al, 2007).
This is not to say that effectiveness itself plays no
part in promoting legitimacy for example a
recent study based on a survey of London
residents concludes that the police must (among
other things) be seen to be effective to be
legitimate (Tankebe, 2013) but overall it seems
that effectiveness is a necessary but not sufficient
condition of legitimacy (Bottoms and Tankebe,
2012). It is therefore essential that the police also
focus on improving the quality of everyday contact
and ensuring that they meet public expectations
of fair and legitimate behaviour. This applies not
just to contact with victims or members of the
public. Behaving fairly and respectfully towards
suspects and offenders may also encourage
greater compliance with the law and co-operation
with the police in the future (Hough et al, 2010).
The latter is particularly important given that many
offenders are also victims.
The significance of how, and not simply whether,
the law is enforced demonstrates the need to
develop approaches to crime reduction that are
sensitive to the way in which the police enforce

the law and the social context of enforcement.
Given the potentially damaging effects of just
focusing resources on hotspots, how the police
enforce the law has significant implications for
developing local crime reduction interventions at
micro-locations as well as in improving service
quality at a wider level (Weisburd, 2012).
Summary and implications

for the project
While the evidence of effective policing practice
outlined above is relatively compelling, questions
remain about the degree to which this model of
local policing meets 21st century demands. The
existing policing model has been put under
considerable strain by the demands of a more
globalised, culturally diverse and technologically
connected society. Meeting those demands with
fewer resources will be a considerable challenge.
However, this review suggests that focusing
increasingly limited resources on high crime
micro-locations can be effective in reducing
volume crime rates without resulting in
displacement. In contrast, blanket enforcement or
intensive, highly visible policing in such places
tends to have limited short term impact and, if
carried out in ways that are insensitive to
community concerns or are perceived as
heavy-handed, can have damaging
consequences for police legitimacy. This
suggests that crime reduction initiatives should
focus on micro-locations and be especially
sensitive to how the police engage with the
public and enforce the law.
This review has also highlighted the potential
value of being sensitive to the socio-economic
26
context of micro-locations, including the need to

build collective efficacy. One of the strengths of
problem-oriented policing is that it provides a
more effective means of sustainably tackling crime
and the issues that may be driving it than
traditional enforcement approaches. Developing
focused, multi-agency approaches that address
specific crime and disorder problems and the
issues that drive them while supporting the
development of collective efficacy in
micro-locations provides the potential for a more
integrated (i.e. paying attention to the unequal
distribution, and social context of, crime and
disorder) approach to hotspots policing. In areas
of high population turnover, this may offer a
pragmatic and effective means of building greater
community resilience. And in times of rising
budgetary restraint, such an approach may
become increasingly attractive.
Lessons from reforms that emphasise the need to
demonstrate responsiveness to community
concerns have highlighted the importance of
providing a service to communities that slowly
builds confidence in the police, particularly where
relationships have been damaged. This suggests
the need for innovation in public engagement.
Research also highlights the dangers of a retreat
from developments in policing that have
recognised the impact of crime and disorder
signals on peoples sense of security.
On the basis of this review, the Police
Effectiveness in a Changing World project should
focus on developing a thorough understanding of
the problems in hotspots, using a variety of police,
partnership and community sources, which will
entail close working with police and partner
agencies. It should also take account of the
increasing evidence on the degree to which the

way in which policing is carried out is crucial to
ensuring that general everyday interactions, and in
particular targeted interventions, are experienced
as fair and legitimate. This reinforces the need for
approaches to be sensitive to the legitimacy of
police conduct, fostering future co-operation and
compliance. It may be possible in this way to
deliver a sustained impact on crime.
27
2. The challenges for local policing

in a changing world
The above discussion highlights the degree to
which research into effective policing practice in
reducing crime has focused on the role of policing
in prevention and deterrence, in tackling highly
localised problems and in building relationships of
trust with localised communities. While this
research remains relevant to local policing, there is
a growing concern that current policing practice
may not be attuned to, or meet the considerable
challenges thrown up by rapidly changing social,
economic, political and technological changes. It
is therefore important that a project to improve
police effectiveness and reduce crime is attentive
to these changing conditions and their
implications for practice. The following section
explores the challenges for the police service
before looking at ways of responding to them.
The challenges for the delivery of local policing in
the UK are largely the result of socio-economic
and technological changes over which the service
has limited influence, with concomitant shifts in
patterns of crime and demands for security
(Manning, 2010; Brodeur, 2010). In brief, these
changes include:
The fragmentation of families and

communities (Bauman, 2001; Wacquant,
2007).
These characteristics of what has been variously

termed the post-industrial or post-modern age
have created new criminal opportunities, threats
and risks. For example, a rise in the theft of
relatively valuable metal from cars and various
domestic, industrial and infrastructure sites has
been driven by a steep rise in the international
price of scrap metal driven by demand from
industrial growth in China. This increase in metal
theft has put significant demands on the police,
with the Home Office estimating that there were
between 80,000 and 100,000 police recorded
metal theft offences in 2010/11 and that metal
theft costs the police over 20 million in staffing
costs (Home Office, 2012).
A further example is the explosion in the use of
communication technology. In 2012, 80 per cent
of households in Great Britain had access to the
internet compared to 55 per cent in 2005 and just
nine per cent of households in the UK in 1998.
Coupled with increased mobility/migration, this
has fundamentally changed the contemporary
nature of social interaction and inter-personal
relationships, which in turn have altered:
The globalisation of markets for goods and

services.
The advent of fast communications, the

internet, new social media and the pace of
technological change.
New patterns of individual mobility and

migration arising in part, but not exclusively,
from the expansion of the European Union.
Patterns of organisation (flatter peer-to-peer

networks are preferred to more traditional
hierarchical organisations.
Levels of trust (interpersonal and institutional

trust tend to be weaker and more contingent).
The nature of community (the increasing

importance of non-place-based affiliation).
Growing income inequality and its influence

on patterns of urban development.
28
The construction of identity (people develop

more complex conceptions of who they are
and to what groups they belong) (see, for
example, Castells, 1996).
They have also affected patterns of crime,

including the organisation (or otherwise) of serious
crime, in enabling extended but often brief
networks of association, the networking of
strangers and the industrialisation of false and
borrowed identities for fraud and other criminal
purposes (Levi, 2012). Although demand and
supply dynamics continue to be experienced at
the local level, this means that it no longer makes
sense to tackle crime in one locality without
reference to what is happening in other places;
global phenomena (for example human trafficking)
increasingly impact on local communities (Bullock
et al, 2009). These changes present considerable
challenges for the police service in terms of
interoperability (i.e. working across borders,
whether local, regional or national) and in staying
ahead of increasingly fluid criminal networks and
the proliferation of new kinds of offences and new
ways of committing them.
These changes also have considerable
implications for the ways in which the police
engage with increasingly transient and culturally
diverse communities, and with citizens connected
more through communication technology and
social media 61 per cent of UK adults were
found to be users in a 2011 survey than through
the places where they live. Although most crime,
and of course most offenders, remain
geographically located, these changes have
considerable implications for developing
relationships of trust and for communicating with,
and acquiring reliable information about criminality
from, the public.
6
This may affect forces differently depending on their reliance on central grant
funding and local precepts to supplement budgets. Community Safety Partner
agencies also face considerable cuts to budgets which could increase the
demands on the police service.
One of the defining features of this changing

social context, and in particular the so-called
Information Age, has been the unprecedented
surge in the quantity of information produced,
processed and consumed. This is as true for the
police as it is for the public (Innes and Roberts,
2011). These changes have been coupled with
increased demands for security and order, often
played out in calls for more visible and accessible
policing (Her Majestys Inspector of Constabulary,
2011). The police are not only expected to be on
call 24/7, but are also expected to respond
immediately to an increasing range of problems
(Fleming and Grabosky, 2009). Responding
effectively to this volume and diversity of calls for
service as well as to an increasingly wide range of
crime and disorder issues at local and cross
border levels, while attempting to meet public
demands for a visible presence, presents
significant pressures on police resources. There
are concerns that 20th century strategies of
policing, based on local street-level knowledge
and local prevention/ deterrence and
problem-solving, do not fully meet these 21st
century challenges (Innes and Roberts, 2011).
The police service also currently faces a period of
considerable organisational change as it adapts to
the immediate challenges of a 20 per cent cut in
the Home Office Police Grant between 2010 and
2014 and the prospect of long-term local
authority budgetary restraint. 6 The police are
required to do more with less, which is driving
forces to focus on improving efficiency and
reducing costs, particularly staff costs (Her
Majestys Inspector of Constabulary, 2011). The
need to reduce spending (for example on
services, on non-warranted personnel or on
management costs) and ensure resources are
used efficiently to meet demand (for example

ensuring shift patterns match demand for
immediate/urgent response and focusing
resource management on the most significant
threats and risks) is focusing minds on meeting
organisational goals more efficiently, often by
adopting familiar managerial principles to
organisational change.
A key concern is that these pressures could result
in retrenchment to reactive, response-oriented
approaches, which may not be able to meet the
challenges outlined above. The concern is that
managers will attempt to deploy scarce resources
in response to immediate demands by
disinvesting in specialist, proactive, investigative
and civilian analytical staff capable of contributing
to more sustainable crime reduction (Karn, 2010).
These challenges may also result in pressures to
reduce the allocation of resources on community
engagement and neighbourhood policing as
police personnel are moved to other duties.
Equally, pressures on local authority and other
partner agency budgets threaten the resources
available for local problem-solving and for
strategic partnership work, despite an
acknowledgement that these are needed to
maintain sustainable reductions in crime.
A parallel imperative within the current
governments police reform agenda is to
encourage the public to undertake more social
control work, for the police in effect to do less
with more (Innes, 2011). This reflects a wider
reform agenda focusing on promoting greater
local accountability and voluntarism (evident
particularly in the introduction of PCCs and the
Big Society) while reducing state capacity.
The current government reforms demand a
smaller, smarter and sharper style of policing
29
(Innes, 2011), with fewer resources, better use of

human and informational assets and targeting
interventions to where they can make the most
difference. But in the past, reform of policing has
been driven largely by failures or crises, such as
the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the
Hillsborough tragedy and the miscarriages of
justice in the 1980s and 1990s, rather than policy
(Reiner, 2010). It remains to be seen how far
current policy reforms will lead to real changes in
operational policing, given the cultural resistance
to change in the service.
As mentioned above, a key element of the recent
reforms has been the replacement of Police
Authorities with directly elected PCCs alongside
Police and Crime Panels. Their role is to set local
(force level) policing priorities, plan policing
budgets and work with Chief Constables,
community safety partnerships and criminal
justice agencies and community groups to deliver
community safety and overall security in the area.
Until these changes become more established it is
difficult to predict their full implications. While their
introduction may present some opportunities to
promote a shift away from central (i.e. Home
Office) accountability and greater responsiveness
to local concerns, they may also expose the
service to greater political influence (Association of
Chief Police Officers, 2011). Equally, whether
PCCs will be motivated to direct resources to
tackling crimes that are more hidden, such as
organised crime, and less likely to have popular
appeal, such as domestic violence, family child
abuse and hate crime, has been questioned
(Innes, 2011). How responsive such arrangements
will be to their local population when structured at
force level, particularly in large force areas with big
and sometimes very diverse populations, is also
30
open to question. There has been very little focus

to date on how PCCs will mobilise and engage
communities in decision-making, or in less formal
voluntary activity, and rather more on their role as
crime fighters (Innes, 2011).
PCC powers to commission services present a
particular challenge given the scope this gives
them to invite a wide range of providers to deliver
patrol or other community safety related services.
This may present significant challenges for
partnership working and expose local
arrangements to greater fragmentation, which
may also make analysis of crime trends and
patterns more problematic. How responsive such
arrangements will be to national and international
crime trends and to using evidence of effective
practice also remains to be seen. A key challenge
for local level police commanders and their
partners will be in juggling the demands of police
management, PCCs, Her Majestys Inspectorate
of Constabulary (HMIC) and other new national
arrangements (for example the National Crime
Agency and the College of Policing) as well as
partner agencies and local communities.
31
3. Meeting the challenges

Rapidly changing social, economic and
technological environments, with new forms of
criminal activity that increasingly transcend local
and national borders, pose real challenges for
neighbourhood policing, as well as for intelligence
gathering, analysis and investigation. This section
outlines the implications of this context for policing
practice and in particular for the Police
Effectiveness in a Changing World project. Three
of the four high crime wards identified in Luton
and Slough on which the project will focus are
characterised by transient, culturally diverse
populations and reflect the rapid population
growth contributing to a relatively young
population profile in both towns. The fourth ward
is a traditional white working class area, with less
cultural diversity but experiencing similarly high
rates of crime and multiple deprivation, which in
the current economic climate, with high rates of
unemployment and cuts in public services and
welfare benefits, is likely to worsen.
Neighbourhood policing:
adapting to the changing world
One of the challenges for neighbourhood policing
is to foster and maintain trust and legitimacy in
those communities with more transient and
culturally diverse populations. Neighbourhood
policing built around problem-solving approaches
helps build trust, reduce fear and encourage
reporting, particularly if combined with flexible
approaches to identifying residents concerns,
understanding their expectations and involving
them in developing effective responses. Such
approaches might, for example, include innovative
forms of community engagement, tailored to a
variety of groups, such as new migrants or young
people living in specific micro-location hotspots.
They may range from proactive attendance by the

police at community events or meetings, to the
involvement of community members in local
decision-making and using new forms of
communication technology and social media.
With the introduction of PCCs, this is likely to be
an opportune moment to focus on developing
new and better forms of community engagement.
Another challenge for the police (along with their
partners) concerns building collective efficacy and
trust in multi-ethnic and culturally diverse
neighbourhoods with high rates of deprivation and
population turnover. As these are usually high
crime areas with a history of police intervention,
the lessons from insensitive enforcement-based
approaches suggest the need for caution and in
particular an awareness of how such approaches
can undermine resilience and trust. However,
attempts to promote police-community dialogue
about problems and their solution inherently
require an appeal to common values, which is
more complex in multi-cultural communities. It is
not possible for managers to appeal to the
dominant norms of every cultural group but rather
to find common ground that reflects a more
universal morality (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012).
It has been suggested that in an increasingly
globalised world, those in positions of power need
to identify and articulate areas of shared morality
and negotiate their acceptance among a range of
communities with different normative cultures
(Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). In practice this
means that police managers and front line officers
have to think about the legitimacy of their actions
in the eyes of a variety of audiences, often with
conflicting interests. These may include very
different understandings of the priority issues and
32
how the police and/or partners should best

respond to them (Huey, 2007). Effective
engagement with different communities is
therefore crucial to developing approaches that
are sensitive to a range of community concerns.
In such areas, expectations of the police and
whether people feel able to trust them will vary
according to their previous contact with police,
whether in the UK or in their countries of origin.
However, strong shared values of justice are
important in shaping immediate judgments about
the legitimacy of contact with the police,
irrespective of preconceived ideas of whether the
police may be trusted in general (Bottoms and
Tankebe, 2012; Karn, 2007). This could have
transformative potential in the long term in that it
could shift expectations of policing even if
previous experiences have been damaging. In
practice this means improving public experiences
of contact with officers, and attempting to
engender this among officers by appealing to
professional norms that strike a chord with their
values (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). This may be
challenging to deliver and to succeed would
almost certainly need commitment from senior
and especially middle managers.
Developing intelligence through

structured engagement
While much of the research on local policing has
focused on fostering confidence and reducing
fear of crime by tackling visible crime and
disorder, there has been less focus on the role of
neighbourhood and response policing in building
trusting relationships with those able to provide
useful information about more hidden criminal
activity. Notably, there is little evidence on the
capacity for local policing to contribute to an
understanding of criminal or incident

connectedness beyond their local area. A style
of neighbourhood policing that attempts to build
links in fragmented communities and identify
connections between local problems and issues
that go beyond local boundaries is likely to require
a greater emphasis on intelligence-gathering and
analysis. A more structured, systematic approach
to community engagement may be needed if the
police are to gather community intelligence
proactively from residents knowledgeable about
local crime (Lowe and Innes, 2012). This would
help to alert the police to growing problems in
areas where they lack good contacts and to
access reliable information not currently reported
to the police or their partners.
Public understanding of the police as the first port
of call in dealing with problems in their
neighbourhood can mean that the service drowns
in the noise of information about relatively trivial
but highly visible incidents. This can result in failing
to connect local knowledge to more serious (but
often hidden) criminal activity. This richer
understanding of how low level disorder may
connect with other less visible, but more harmful
activity in an area is really only obtainable from
engaging residents knowledgeable about such
connections. A more structured engagement
approach might also help to build relationships with
local residents in a position to know about more
serious criminal activity. While covert human
sources are one means of accessing such
information, improving the conduct of local officers
could potentially increase the amount and quality of
local intelligence from offenders and victims with
whom they are in daily contact. This suggests
fostering behaviour that meets public (including
victim, witness, suspect and offender) expectations
of police conduct and developing officers

confidence to use their discretion, with integrity, to
build relationships with, in particular, more
suspect members of the community. As many
hotspots are also offender residence hotspots,
these activities may in practice go hand in hand.
Contributing street-officer knowledge

to intelligence development
Greater police effectiveness and efficiency could
be achieved if the information and intelligence
aspects of policing were organised differently
(Innes and Roberts, 2011). Although street level
officers are an important source of primary
information (Manning and Hawkins, 1989) and
accessing information from the public is implicit in
the functions of local policing, little is known about
how neighbourhood officers work with intelligence
analysts. Policing has always been knowledge
work (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997), but the
demands of the Information Age pose new and
quite specific challenges of information
management. Effective intelligence-led or
problem-solving approaches to policing rely on
the effective acquisition, management and use of
information if it is to help forces adapt to change
(Innes and Roberts, 2011). The limited degree to
which bottom up intelligence has been fed into
higher levels 7 has, for example, been identified as
a considerable weakness in the implementation of
the NIM (Maguire and John 2003). In theory this
model was meant to shape the way in which
information could be fed through to each
operational level of policing, but in practice
identifying what information should be fed
upwards has proved difficult and NIM has tended
to be more top down than bottom up (Maguire
and John, 2003). Similarly, opportunities to use
7
The NIM has three principle levels encompassing local policing, force level, and
inter-force level.
33
partnership information to contribute to a bottom

up intelligence picture, particularly in tackling
serious criminality, have been rare (Van Staden et
al, 2011).
There are a number of challenges to improving the
capacity of local policing, working with their
partners, to contribute to developing better, more
relevant intelligence beyond building good
relationships with knowledgeable sources.
Officers need to recognise whether information
they acquire by just being present in their
communities is significant or otherwise and make
sure they routinely record it fully and accurately
into intelligence database systems (Cope, 2004).
Observations of a Basic Command Unit (BCU) in
London, for example, showed that a significant
proportion of intelligence submissions were never
entered on the system (Innes and Roberts, 2011).
Some officers can also be unwilling to share what
they know with civilian analysts, whose civilian
status within the policing hierarchy can be
ambiguous (Cope, 2004). These barriers limit the
effective conversion of primary information into
useful intelligence through analysis and undermine
the credibility of analysis (and tasking based upon
it) in the eyes of officers who are well aware of the
limitations of information entered on police force
databases (Innes et al, 2005).
The difficulties of converting experiential
knowledge of street level policing into a form that
can be used by analysts to create useful
intelligence to inform tasking is a good example of
one of the challenges facing the police in
adjusting to a rapidly changing information
environment (Innes and Roberts, 2011). Where
offences committed locally originate outside the
locality (or even the country), the task is further
34
complicated by needing to obtain information

from other forces or countries. It requires higher
level skills in the use of IT and possibly additional
resources to access, for example, translation
services or knowledge about other countries
criminal justice systems. Developing these kinds
of skills is crucial to effective problem-solving in
highly diverse and mobile communities such as
those in Luton and Slough.
Analysis and intelligence

Turning information into intelligence that provides
a detailed, on-going picture of rapidly changing
socio-economic, demographic and crime trends
in ways that can contribute to actionable
interventions or investigations is a crucial
component of developing effective crime
reduction approaches. The value of
intelligence-led policing has become accepted as
a way of achieving more effective and efficient use
of resources for predicting risks and threats and
preventing harm. However, recent research
suggests there are systemic problems in the
processing and use of information that limits the
capacity of the police to do this (Innes and
Roberts, 2011).
A central role in the processing of information is to
establish its provenance where and from whom
does it come? Is the source reliable? An
increasing challenge is dealing with the sheer
volume of information in a timely manner, much of
which is limited in terms of quality. For example, in
the study of a London BCU intelligence unit
referred to above, 10 per cent of submissions
were graded as containing no intelligence or
information and three quarters were not
progressed because they did not reflect the
forces strategic objectives (Innes and Roberts,

2011). While prioritising is clearly necessary, this
limits the forces capacity to identify and respond
to emerging risks and threats (Cope, 2004).
The focus of crime analysis on gripping already
identified problems mirrors the performance
culture in the police service, which is the context
in which crime analysis has developed. The
influence of geo-location mapping of crime
hotspots has, for example, largely arisen from its
benefits in terms of efficient resource allocation,
but in practice mapping rarely goes beyond the
descriptive and is therefore limited in its capacity
to inform tasking and problem-solving (Innes et al,
2005). Crime mapping also tends to be used to
drive resources towards managing highly
localised, time-limited spates of criminal activity,
rather than to exploring persistent problems or to
making connections with out-of-area activity.
Crime analysis tends to be shaped by traditional
police understandings of crime, especially
tracking the movements or networks of the usual
suspects (Innes et al, 2005). While this can
contribute to, say, the proactive investigation of
illicit markets, it tends on the whole to reinforce
organisational knowledge about known
offenders without necessarily establishing the real
position of individuals within a network or the
often fleeting nature of their relationships. In
conditions of increased population mobility and
transience and mediated relationships between
strangers, these techniques have their limits.
A recent report for HMIC found that information
given to officers at briefings usually related to
incidents or events that had already happened
rather than what was anticipated, so they tended
to be reactive rather than proactive (Her Majestys
Inspector of Constabulary, 2012). The same

report found that officers did not know what kind
of real-time intelligence would be of most use to
them and that their training failed to provide them
with the evidence-base they needed effectively to
prevent crime. Furthermore, officers tend to
commission the simple collation of information
rather than more sophisticated prospective or
predictive analyses, while analysts remain
sceptical about the degree to which their analysis
is used to inform tasking (Innes et al, 2005).
To identify rapidly changing crime trends and
more dispersed patterns and networks of criminal
activity proactively requires a broad range of
analytical and investigative skills. The essential
role that analysis plays in problem-solving and
successful partnership working suggests that
additional resources should be invested in crime
analysis and that more attention should be given
to improving the ways in which analysts work and
developing their status within the organisation.
This is possibly one of the most urgent tasks that
need to be addressed if higher quality intelligence
is to better inform effective approaches to policing
in a rapidly changing environment.
35
36
Conclusion
Long-term socio-economic and technological
changes, with concomitant changes in patterns of
crime and demands for security, present
enormous operational challenges for the police
service in working across borders (both
local/regional and national) and in keeping up to
speed with rapid changes in the modus operandi
of criminals and their associates. Responding
effectively to these developments while attempting
to meet increasing public and political demands
for security, and adapting to the prospect of
long-term budgetary restraint and wider police
reform, present some significant challenges for
the service. A key concern is that these
immediate pressures could result in retrenchment
to reactive response-oriented approaches, likely
to be inadequate in meeting these 21st century
challenges.
The Police Effectiveness in a Changing World
project will draw on knowledge of effective,
sustainable crime reduction practice, developing
multi-agency problem-solving approaches to
address issues in micro-location hotspots. The
project will also draw on the evidence of the value
of community engagement and procedural justice
in securing sustainable reductions to persistent
crime and disorder issues in high crime areas. It
will look to introduce good practice and innovation
in helping to develop interventions to increase
police effectiveness and reduce crime and identify
ways of improving systems, processes, skills and
techniques in intelligence analysis and
intelligence-led tasking. In this way the project will
aim to develop the skills and infrastructure at the
local level to improve the capacity of the police
and their partners to address crime in this rapidly
changing world.
37
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Bauman, Z. (2001) Community: seeking safety in an insecure world. Cambridge: Polity.
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